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I don't find most horror movies particularly scary. I don't generally sleep with the lights on after a frightening TV show. Creepy books rarely linger in my mind. It's a bit of a shame, really, like not being able to taste a particularly exotic flavour.

But every once in a while I'll come across a movie scene, book passage and so on that gives me literal goosebumps and - if you'll pardon the expression - puckers my porthole.

Fear is very subjective, which is why it's tough to compile a list of things that are guaranteed to give a Halloween-worthy fright to anyone. But here are five moments from different types of entertainment media that have somehow cracked through my own personal fear-armour and scared me crapless. Almost literally, on some occasions.

My scariest movie scene

The ending of Blair Witch, the twin girls in The Shining, that frickin' clown puppet in Poltergeist ... all creepy stuff. But it's the nurse's station scene in 1990's otherwise unremarkable The Exorcist III that still makes me yelp out loud every time I watch it, even though I know exactly what's going to happen. It's nearly five minutes of quiet dread with a heart-stopping payoff.

My scariest TV episode

If we're talking strictly episodic TV (and leaving Stephen King's IT out of the equation), it would have to be the unforgettable episode of The X-Files called Home, about a trio of inbred brothers suspected of burying a baby alive. If creepy deformed hillbillies weren't awful enough, it was the revelation of what was under their bed that sealed it. This was the first X-Files episode to air with a viewer discretion warning for graphic content.

My scariest book chapter

Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves is a unique and bizarre novel that plays with layout and structure, not to mention your sanity. When the confident explorer Holloway is completely unhinged by a house that contains an impossible, shifting labyrinth in its guts, he eventually kills himself, alone and trapped in the claustrophobic darkness. I had to put the book down at this point and take a walk outside.

My scariest videogame moment

The interactive nature of video games can make them more terrifying than most movies, and games such as Amnesia: Dark Descent, the recent Outlast and the aptly named F.E.A.R. all contain stuff not for the faint of heart. But it was the burlap-masked Dr. Salvador from 2005's Resident Evil 4 that turned the simple sound of a chainsaw being revved into a trigger for absolute panic. Which is why I could never be a lumberjack.

My scariest website

I still think the ultra low-budget YouTube series Marble Hornets is creepier than most "scary" TV shows, but for pure gasping fright you can't beat Korean horror webcomics. I've not seen many translated into English, but here's one that is - and seriously, don't be wearing your favourite pair of pants if you dare scroll down through it: bit.ly/koreanghost. You've been warned. Happy Halloween.